Vol 18 No 6

The Australia 2020 Youth Summit seems destined to be a chinwag of the 'haves' to the exclusion of the have-nots. Realistic solutions to youth violence and alienation can only be achieved through holistic community approaches.

Adherents of many religious groups are interviewed about their beliefs, practices, ethical framework and attitude to contemporary Australian society. Their stories often try to make points of contact between religious practice and Western culture.

A socially awkward young man orders an artificial girlfriend over the internet. Despite this ostensibly bawdy premise, Lars and the Real Girl looks beyond lowbrow laughs in its focus on the responses of those in Lars' community.

This year marks the 60th anniversary of the first showing of Christian Dior's New Look fashion designs in Sydney. After years of wartime material restraints the New Look offered Australian women a fresh way of expressing their individuality and sensuality through fashion.

The great hope for the Beijing Olympics was that it would persuade China's government that human rights protection is good diplomacy and good business. The power of persuasion would be lost if conscience-bound competitors are prevented from commenting.

It seems Victoria Police's Chief Commissioner, Christine Nixon, was fast-tracked to unpopularity by trying to be a thoughtful, discerning leader. The bitterness displayed by those she's locked horns with is
testament to the danger of reforming a powerful institution.

The United Nations estimates that 5,000 honour killings occur annually. These killings are a rebellion against modernity, attempts to hold on to older traditional
values, especially concerning social relations and sexuality.

The Unsual Life of Tristan Smith is an engaging if uncomfortable tale. But a closer reading reveals author Peter Carey as social critic. While themes of
colonialism, migration, and identity are explicit,
disability enters more subtly.

Australia could learn much from East Timor about the importance — and
limitations — of acknowledging a painful past. East
Timor's experience suggests the significance of both symbolic acknowledgement and material reparations.

In the Orthodox Church, Lent is a fairly strict period
of austerity, which is one reason for Carnival: traditional societies
have long understood that sessions of high spirits
are needed before and after difficult times. They are also undisturbed
by the blurring of the sacred and the secular.

The international community reacts rather than anticipates. It was only when hundreds of thousands of people were displaced after
the Bolshevik revolution, that protection mechanisms such as the 1951 Refugee Convention began to be developed.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd plans to spend $53 million on the problem of
binge drinking, including $19.1 million to target underage drinkers. It's hard to tell your teenager not to drink as you reach into the fridge to grab another sauv blanc.